What stood out most to me is this: It took Hoda Kotb approximately 13 minutes into her segment to ask 11-year-old Josie Romero of Tucson, Arizona: “Do you feel trapped in the wrong body?”

Whenever this question is posed, I find it to be more of a leading statement rather than a true inquiry or invitation for a trans subject to speak about their life experience or outlook on their relationship with their bodies. Frankly whenever it’s posed it never sits well with me, and I shared my frustration on Twitter, saying: “‘Trapped in the wrong body’ is a convenient, lazy explanation but it fails to describe ‪#trans‬ people & our bodies every time.”

“Trapped in the wrong body” is a convenient, lazy explanation but it fails to describe #trans people & our bodies every time. #girlslikeus

To me, “trapped in the wrong body” is a blanket statement that makes trans* people’s varying journeys and narratives palatable to the masses. It’s helped cis masses understand our plight – to a certain extent. It’s basically a soundbite of struggle, “I was a girl (boy) trapped in a boy’s (girl’s) body,” which aims to humanize trans* folks, who are often seen as alien, as freaks, as less-than-human and other.

Since sharing my story, I admittedly have been faced with unlearning many so-called trans truths that have been passed to me as a woman who’s grown up with an abundance (not meaning diverse) of media portraits on trans lives (or rather trans people’s transitions). I’ve learned to take what is depicted as our truth and analyze them against my actual lived experience as a woman who grew up trans. One so-called truth that I’ve analyzed over and over and over again is the “trapped” narrative. And through this ongoing analysis, I’ve learned to take ownership of how my body is viewed as an “out” trans woman.

After inviting people into my life (I prefer “invite” rather than “come out” because I’ve never hidden who I was a second in my life), I’ve been a subject in many interviews in which I’ve been confronted with this rhetorical “trapped” statement – and others pertaining to my visible and imagined body.

Why don’t I like it? Because it places me in the role of victim, and to those who take mainstream media depictions as truth I’m seen as a human to be pitied because I’m someone who needs to be saved, rather than a self-determined woman with agency and choice and the ability to define who I am in this society and who I will become in spite of it.

I’ve learned in the past year or so that I am not a prisoner of my body despite the obstacles I’ve faced to be fully myself. And I’ve also learned that there are many trans people who view their bodies differently than the way I have viewed mine – and that no monolithic trans narrative exists (despite the 60-year effort of the media to promote one).

Hota Kotb, who hosted Dateline NBC’s “Transgender Children in America”

Last year I wrote of my teenage struggle with my body in Marie Claire: “I was the one who had lived with the sheer torment of inhabiting a body that never matched who I was inside, the one devastated by the quirk of fate that had consigned me to a life of masked misery.”

Dramatic, I know. And it follows the same trapped narrative because at the time of writing it I had a different relationship with my body partly based on the media’s influence and view of it. Yet there is no denying that the first 18 years of my life were overwhelmed with trying to settle this incongruence between who I knew myself to be and who people thought I should be. This goes beyond my body and this goes beyond just being a trans girl coming of age in this modern society, where we’re constantly bombarded with media images on how a woman *should* look.

And I’m still unsure if I learned to view my body as this villain because of how trans* bodies are viewed in the media – or if it could’ve been different if I was taught to love myself wholly despite the limitations my body in this society placed on me. (I’m currently in the midst of writing my memoir Fish Food so I’m currently in the process of learning and unlearning many things.)

Regardless, in sharing my story I wanted to show girls like myself that there is life after transitioning – despite the fact that nearly all media portraits are about transitioning rather than actually living post-transition. I wanted young women specifically to know that good awaited them in this world, and that more is possible in spite of our struggles to love our bodies, which is a connecting theme between all women, regardless of their assigned sex.

And part of that hope is the evolution of our views of ourselves and our bodies which have been up for public debate since Christine Jorgensen stepped off that plane in 1953. I point you to words that have pushed me to reclaim the totality of who I am. They were spoken by transpinay transgender rights activist Sass Rogando Sasot in a speech called “Reclaiming the Wronged Body”:

“I am not trapped by my body. I am trapped by your beliefs. And I want to reclaim this body from those who want it to breathe and be fed by their dogmas.”

I truly wonder how differently we would view ourselves if we were able to truly see ourselves in the media, without the preconceived notions of how our bodies appear to those not living with trans* bodies.

59 Comments

And fwiw, may I also say that the pain shared here by many in comments is not lost on me. I am in tears from reading. I can hardly ever contemplate these issues without a swell and surge of wrenching emotion, protectiveness, cheerleading, and desire to serve, and other feelings I don’t yet have names for. The level of perceptiveness, honesty and intelligence here seems well-fitted to bringing one’s gifts forth into one’s own life, as well as into the world in whatever way & degree each chooses. Blessing. (If my comments don’t get past moderation, I won’t be at all offended. Thanks for the opportunity to be in the discussion in whatever form seems appropriate.)

Spectacular! Thank you (all) for speaking so depthfully to this, and bringing forth the truth about some of the current forced artificial frameworks and unnecessary dichotomies – esp that of lazy, convenient, cis-comforting soundbites/labels/containers vs one’s actual lived experience (and how we can authentically express it, or not, as we each choose). I’m not trans, but am cis/hetero, and a staunch lifelong supporter of my trans friends and anyone involved in any challenging gender experiences. I help develop practices for helping any interested people to perceive, own & speak powerfully from their own authenticity, esp in relationship & community. As far as my trans connections, I listen, learn, stay out of the way or jump in as asked, and am joyful to see how things have changed for better during my lifetime – may they keep on changing for better, with empowered folks like you being real and speaking to your actual experience. Imho that is good & essrntial for everyone.

I often describe my journey as “growing into the trans*man that I am.” I’ve never identified with the “wrong body” narrative, and frankly, it contributed to my own transphobia, confusion, and sense that I didn’t belong in the trans* community/was not trans*.

My “growing up trans” process INCLUDED my everyday struggles to express my gender identity with the body in which I was born. It included identifying with gay boys/men and seeking them out for community; it included frustration and friction re: how to care for and present my body according to society’s standards; it included feeling like I had a secret, internal, WISE identity, and feeling more evolved than poor ol’ regular CIS people! It was a real mix of good and bad — like MOST people, I guess. Except that as a trans* human, I thought, felt, acted/reacted and had to integrate from a more gender-based place than most.

For me, it also included figuring out my sexual orientation. I could never bring myself to identify as a lesbian, because meant I was a “woman attracted to other women.” I had HUGE problems with identifying myself as a woman; I still can’t even SAY the word in relation to myself because it feels so wrong and foreign. It wasn’t until I was exposed to butch/femme culture and actual real, live, breathing trans* folk that I understood that I had the option of loving women without identifying as one! Whew!

Just another couple of decades of a person’s life thrown under the bus by America’s obsession with either/or (male/female; gay/straight; CIS/transsexual; Democrat/Republican; Christian/infidel).

One of the best, most comforting things I’ve heard Janet say (in one of her rebuttal interviews with Piers Morgan) is that she was born a BABY (not a boy), and that as soon as she had the agency/resources to live as herself, she did.

This perfectly describes my experience. It took me 43 years to scrape all of most of my “agencies” together, but I eventually did, and I’m OK now. No “wrong body”; just a long uphill rocky path — like most folks, I’d wager.

Interesting post and interesting perspective. I think that perspective is an important consideration when trying to get an understanding of just how much this experience can vary I think it is important to understand just how different it can be for someone like Janet who had the understanding and support to make those crucial life altering/saving corrections to her body, early on–as compared to those who still struggle day to day after decades of living with this massive incongruity.

Very much like Janet, I was one of those fortunate few able to make those very necessary changes needed to make my body, mind and life whole at a very young age. Unlike Janet, I have not gone public about that painful process and because I see that process of transformation as just that, a process, I feel that I have little to offer on the experience of being ‘trans’. I must have missed that memo.

When I was away on a boy’s camp ,when I was teenager, the leaders decided to put on stage show ,where we did different acts. One boy asked my dress as as a wowan, in a dress and make up on. I felt much much more comfortable in the woman’s dress than the the boy clothes. We stayed in the dresses until we went to bed. The next morning when when I put my normal clothes on, I knew it was not me.My pensis felt so tight,I ws not in the not in the right clothes because the night before was the real me-a woman.
I always a woman’a nighty to bed, wear woman’s skirt’s because since that night I have been of those trapped in a man’s body. If I could have I would had a sex change and became the real me. Some people that I have not known have thought I said IRuth instead because of my female voice

Dear Janet, I forgot to mention..Yes I pretty much agree with you on this issue. Also I would love to recieve an email from you. I read your story in Marie Clair 2yrs? ago. I admire you very much. Peace to you.!!!

The hermeneutics of suspicion is becoming the de facto form of analysis for the trans blogosphere–and, to some extent, for good reason. Given how narrative descriptions of gender dysphoria have been turned into hard templates for determining trans worthiness; given how rehashed and reiterated trans tropes get thrown back at us in shorthand mockery (“I’m a penguin born in the wrong body”); given the facile way in which our experiences get reduced to sudoku puzzles that also connect the dots . . . I understand the disdain.

But come on — how old is she? I wish I was that articulate at her age. I think we are now entering a period in trans articulation in which, while respect the vast array of descriptions people have for the countlessness of their life experience, we are also at risk for a reactionary scepticism that disavows, disallows, and finds theoretical fault pretty much any time a trans person opens up their mouths in public. Yes, we have every right to critique and question, but I do wonder if we’re soon to reach the point that we’ll have run out of expressive potential, given a growing anxiety of silencing, erasing, or excluding. I know that, increasingly, the tendency can be to say nothing, rather than to say ‘the wrong thing’, with the threat of community leader blogs and twitter tirades in response.

I sympathise very strongly that some people do not like this metaphor, that it’s been used to prevent people from access to medical treatment. But I also see how others, especially frightened yet determined children, reach for whatever narrative common ground they have in order to speak outward what is an intensely difficult inner state. And although I wasn’t “trapped in the wrong body” — Jan Morris coined this phrase in /Conundrum/ as far back as the 1970s — I certainly was not dwelling in the right one. And I don’t think that makes me theoretically disqualified as ‘current, hip, trans theorist’ on account of my own portfolio of interpretive conclusions.

Emily – thanks for your thoughtful comment. I, too, understand that we shouldn’t critique a tweenager’s or any trans person’s description of their own experience and relationship with their body. That was not the intent of this piece. The intent was to criticize the media’s framing of this tween’s body. The young trans child wasn’t given a chance or the space to articulate how she felt about her body. The question she was asked was, “Do you feel trapped in your body?” It was a yes or no question. With this piece, I argue that we and the media should give each person the space to describe in their own words how they feel about their body and experience, and that some in fact may say they feel trapped while others, like Sass, whom I quote at the end, may have different words to describe their experience.

i wouldn’t be trapped in this body if they hadn’t already done so much surgery and chemistry to me as a child without my consent and then now that i know what’s going on i can’t even access the health care to deal with the pain scarring & dysphoria. they have more control over my hormones and genitals than i do. i was born this way and they made me undergo surgery. what bathroom is the little intersex kid supposed to use? kick me in the gonads two weeks after genital surgery and then don’t listen to me about how bad everyone at school treated me. i is for intersex is for invisible if i had a chance to find out what my body was really like maybe i wouldn’t be as transsexual as i am? but at this point i can’t be bothered to care or differentiate. my body has been modified by chemicals since before i was born and i’ve been under the knife more than once and it will happen again and this time it will be mine. i do not feel like you are erasing our discourse, i feel like we need more ways to get the word out about how strange and double-edged a lot of these tools are. that the more i come out the more hatred and resistance some people seem willing to spew openly. our society’s gender binary is a festering wound and in its pain it carves its lines onto and into us and at least this time i will be the one in charge of where the scars are, and what for

I will be brief with this due to time that I have, But I can partly agree only. As an editor for print media you were dealing with people that exhibit long attention span. The place where the “wrong body” point is used is generally TV were the attention span is much lower; try around 25 seconds. If they can not get a good idea of what is being said in 25 seconds, you lose them. So, I would say give them something else that is around five seconds to read on air that is better. I can’t think of anything myself, but I haven’t done serious writing for a long time and as sort of out of practice on those skills.

Excerpted from “Video Tape” by Riki Wilchins
from Read My Lips – copyright 1997 by Firebrand Books: “The problem with transsexual women is not that we are trapped in the wrong bodies. The truth is, that is a fairly trivial affair corrected with doctors and sharp scalpels. The problem is that we are trapped in a society which alternates between hating and ignoring or tolerating and exploiting us and our experience, and more importantly, we are trapped in the wrong minds. We have, too many of us for too long, been trapped in too much self-hate: the hate reflected back at us by others who are unwilling to look at the complexity of our lives, dismiss our femaleness, our femininity, and our sense of gender itself and our erotic choices as merely imitative or simply derivative. Wanting desperately to be accepted, and unable to take on the whole world alone, we have too often listened to these voices that were not our own, and forgotten what Alice Walker says when she declares: “…no person is your friend (or kin) who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow and be perceived as fully blossomed as you were intended. Or who belittles in any fashion the gifts you labor so to bring into the world.”

What works for some does not work for others. I actually did feel trapped in the wrong body and do use this term when explaining myself to people. I had to physically change my body to feel “right” it was the best thing I ever did for myself.

As transsexual’s or trans* people we have to understand that our own journey is our own journey and to stop expecting all of us to feel the same way about the “change” .

Janet does amazing work in helping the world to understand what is like to be a transgender person. Thanks for your work.

Thank you for reading and adding your voice, Buck. I, too, believe that we all have various experiences and that one person’s experience doesn’t speak for all trans people’s experience. I hope that by writing this that it doesn’t negate anyone who does in fact feel “trapped.” I just wanted to expand that idea for us all. Thank you again!

I honestly believe you are looking too hard for debate, and taking this “trapped in the wrong body” thing too seriously. Some people genuinely feel that way, so you won’t be effective in making it go away. I’ve always felt trapped, and that won’t change just because someone decides they want to remove “trapped in the wrong body” from the Trans lexicon. My consciousness is feminine, I’ve always gravitated towards feminine, my mind is feminine. My body isn’t “me”, and that’s what this crippled society must learn….that we are NOT our body, we are our mind, our consciousness, our spirit. My consciousness, “ME”, whatever “I” am, is trapped in a physical vessel that does not match my consciousness and my TRUE WILL. Trapped in an incorrect vessel lol. But I still accept my self as a whole. I just feel……trapped, that’s all. The problem with most societies is that they see your body as “you”, they don’t see your CONSCIOUSNESS. It’s the vessel they perceive first. I am more than just my body…

My point is not to negate your experience, but to have media expand the conversation beyond this one soundbite about our bodies. I want there to be more space for all of us to individually define our very varied, diverse experiences, and not have to all adapt to this one idea of being “trapped.”

Indeed, some folks don’t have the resources or the desire to adapt their body. I am not saying that “trapped” should not be used; I’m saying that trans folks who are featured in media should be given the space to define their own experiences, and for some it may not be described as “trapped.”

My 8 year old daughter hates “trapped in a boy’s body”. She also doesn’t like “a girl on the inside, boy on the outside” or “girl brain/boy body”. She says she is a girl everywhere except for one place (if it only were that simple). We say there are many different ways to be a girl and that she is one way to be a girl, and that there are girls like her out there. It sounds like a defect to say you are one thing on the inside and another on the outside, as if you are an alien.

In the months before the official transition, when I strongly suspected this was going to be my child’s road, I read about you, Janet, and it was extremely helpful. I needed to see a happy successful “mainstream” woman to feel hopeful for my daughter. Thank you for this.

Thank you, thank you. There’s so much I could say, but I’ll keep it short: maybe the “trapped in the wrong body” narrative is part of why it took me so long to realize I was trans. I’ve never had any intense or constant sense that my body was wrong. I’ve lived with it most of my life without giving it too many second thoughts. When I was very young I had dreams and wished I was born a girl but it certainly didn’t go so far as trapped in the wrong body. I wonder if, the first few times I encountered trans people, I assumed that this was what defined them as trans, and so didn’t see that in many ways they were JUST LIKE ME. I hope I can learn to explain why I find this narrative problematic; I do feel misunderstood when someone thinks that this is my issue. As someone else said, it’s deeper and not analytical, it’s just something I KNOW about myself, and I suppose most people are uncomfortable with such things, need to pin things down…

Thank you so much for your story — and also thank you to those who left comments! I must admit that I have always been confused by the transgender narrative as it is portrayed in the media. The idea of being “trapped” just never gelled with how I understand my own body and seemed incredibly foreign and difficult to understand. That idea (of being trapped) always seemed to me like it reinforced gender roles & perceptions rather than to allowed us to dispel or reinterpret them. I hope that as time goes on we can have more positive dialogue like this!

As one of the older (by age) transwomen who struggled for sixty odd years with my very existence in a world that somehow did not make sense, I find the concept of being trapped farcical.
I can understand that those who try to make sense of our situation might use the term to describe how they perceive the condition.
The reality for me, but only in respect to who was in the mirror versus who was in my mind was never one of being trapped. People get trapped in a lift, and I have that fear at times, when the lift does not do what is expected. But my life was never like that, certainly I had many questions as to why I was not like I thought I should be but never was I trapped. I believe if I had ever thought I was trapped I would have lost it many years ago. What my life has been possibly would be more accurately described as disordered, trying to make sense of something different, almost illogical.
In fact as an engineer there was nothing logical about who I was, and how could there be when the mind and body image did not match.
Without the wisdom of today’s research, together with the many stories made available by so many people telling their stories, I could do no more than regard my life as just that, my life, something to put up with but never trapped in.
Since I came to realise my life did not have to be the way it was, that I had the ability to make changes, I have moved forward. An issue for all transgender people is not how they see themselves but one of how others see us, the judgements they make about us and how we allow ourselves to be influenced by them.
Having taken control of who I am, I completed my full transition, my life has become finally logical.

Thank you so much for writing this piece. It’s conversation like this that really pushes understandings forward.
As someone newly coming into his own transition, I’ve had to battle through a lot of internal transphobia to get to a place of acceptance. The feeling of being “trapped” just felt so wrong to me and the stereotypes of trans narratives were so hard to relate to that I tried to shut it all out.
Thank you for being a leader in the community and for standing up and showing the real complexity of who you are.

I have many times questioned that if from the moment our mothers are pregnant our society did not insist on pushing us to one side or the other of the binary gender theory and push that gender is all about genitalia then would we and transgendered people ever have a problem with the bodies we were born with. If society gave us the freedom to live who we are inside and did not say there is anything wrong with our bodies and put into boxes and categories according to our body parts we might just be fine if we were loved and respected for who we are inside.

This is what I hear a lot from people who are into feminist theory when I talk to them about my transition. But at least for me, it is not true: I don’t need SRS to conform to society’s ideals of what a woman should look like but to align how my brain expects my body to feel like to the actual body – and to have the kind of sex I would like to have.

FFS is a different issue, though. That’s more about not having as much trouble in society for me.

I’m in total agreement with this piece. The “trapped in the wrong body” narrative is not only far too generalized, but possibly too simplistic to capture ANY trans woman’s experience, let alone the less binary folks in the gender galaxy.

However, a part of it still resonates with me, even though I’ve been about a year and a half on hormones and presenting as female for a little over a year.

It’s not that I feel like there’s a female body stuffed away somewhere in here and I just need to find it and everything will be okay, but I still feel like there’s something “wrong” (wrong for me) with the body I have that can’t really be fixed. It doesn’t feel like an idea born of faulty cultural norms (although I recognize that simply “feeling” like it isn’t doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t), but I do feel somewhat “incomplete” and “broken” somehow and I’m not sure what to do about it. I’m a little bit nauseated by the idea that I should simply accept it and love it as it is.

Part of it might be that there are still parts of physical transition I would like to have done (FFS and GRS, in particular), but even then I feel like my body is just shaped wrong. Like having waited until after puberty has twisted me beyond acceptable repair. I don’t cling to any beauty norms and I recognize that women come in innumerable shapes and sizes, and with innumerable kinds of abilities and disabilities, but I feel like I still fall beyond the pale somehow. I’m not sure whether this looks like internalized transphobia or something like that, but it makes my distaste for the “trapped in the wrong body” narrative all the more confusing.

Sorry for the rambling and verbosity, and possibly vanity, but my thoughts about this are so fuzzy and disjointed that this is the best I can summarize them right now. I hope it’s clear what I’m trying to get out.

I feel the same (or similar) way, and may be the reasons why can clarify it a bit for you as well;

These days I read a lot about women’s bodies, be it in women’s self inspection books, books about Tantra or other self-love/self-respect books. And when I do that, I often need to cry, because a lot of what is described I can relate to and mentally feel the same way, but physically I can never fully have this experience, even with SRS, like when they talk about female erectile tissue (the real clit, that is distributed all over the groin area) or about the menstrual cycle.

Brilliant – thank you so much for blogging on this subject. We have lived in the framework of the Western medical model far too long, and notions of “trapped in the wrong body” and diagnoses of “Gender Identity Disorder” have genuinely undermined trans civil rights by convincing both ourselves and society at large that there is something inherently wrong with us, that we are victims to be pathologized. Personally, I have never experienced myself being the wrong body. My body is still the same body, I have simply modified it to find congruency in my life, and there are many ways people can make bodily modifications to align their mind, body and spirit.

Me, I don’t hate my body, it’s not the wrong one. I’d like it to be different, just like any other human being on the planet can want something different about their body. I just need a little fix here and there, and I’m good to go. My body is fine. Just needs a little tweaking.
I even like most of the plumbing it came with. And just like there are people who like multiple shower heads, I like multiple plumbing options. That’s all there is to it.

At a point in time I also described my experience as being trapped in the wrong body. But I found that as I matured and understood myself better, I was able to better articulate my feelings and conceptualize my reality under truer terms.

“Born in the wrong body” is a generic phrase consistently applied to the trans* experience, and has (unfortunately) become so popular that it is ingrained into our culture and accepted as the universal experience for all of the trans* community.

I really appreciate the insistence on finding more accurate words to describe who we are / who we are becoming / what we’re doing. I have never resonated with The Narratives of “coming out”, “trapped in the wrong body” and others (“FTM”), still I was using them to make sense to my surroundings as a young queer who was trying to self define.

When we choose to not use the prevalent mantra to describe ourselves, we’re creating more possibilities for each other and folks sharing our journeys. … especially as “elder” trans folks for those who are just beginning their journeys to self determination – regardless of their or our age, regardless of where they come to in their own journeys. As you just created more possibilities for me – thank you!

I decided to take a different approach to this issue. I sense that all of the discussion above is heartfelt. Yet, the question implied is, why can’t everyone just understand me for who I think I am?

It seems to me that for most people the whole mixture of genders issue is not the first thing on their plate when they wake up in the morning. The categories they acquired during their growing-up period through adulthood to the present are as natural as the way in which you sense yourselves. Daniel Kahneman in his book Thinking Fast and Slow points out that the human mind is divided into two systems. The System 1 part of our minds operate automatically, quickly, and with little or no effort or voluntary control. It finds and develops answers quickly. System 2 is the analytical portion of our minds which are often associated with our subjective experiences. System 2 wants to slow down and think about it, but System 1 gives such quick and neat answers that System 2 often easily adopts System 1’s rationale and gives in to these quick answers; also because System 2 is lazy. Obviously my description is woefully short, but having said that, it is likely to be an uphill battle to transform human thinking about genders. We have seen this throughout the gay rights issue. What I see in the response to Janet Mock’s article is plethora of approaches being taken by individuals who seek individualized definition. So far, the conceptual scheme of our society(s) has not yet fully awakened to this plight. So, Hoda defines a problem, tries to use words currently in play, without making up a new set of words, and tries to make it simple. That’s so the System 1 part of the mind can tackle the incoming data. Of course, this is all in a proverbial sense, before one has had a cup of coffee.

So, how should the question relating to the gender be asked? One way is to ask, How can humans relate to differences from the norm? Or, How do humans define differences from the duality of male-female? There seems to be a push-pull effect. On one side, the club, tribe, clan, pride, herd, and society have their view and reactions to differentness. Understanding this differentness requires a whole lotta coffee early in the morning. Thus, it is up to the players, sympathizers, critics, and judges to continually make their case. So, with reference to the TV program and article….fire Hoda and laud the program…or is it the other way around? System 2 has not yet enough information. More coffee, please!

I don’t feel “trapped” at all. And fortunately, those in my world don’t view me as such. They see me for what I put out–a heavenly spirit living as I want.

Plain and simple.

Humans need the “trapped in the wrong body” theory because the average person’s intellect does not invite a larger scope of the bigger picture. With so many egos focusing on what defines them, they forget what defines us as a whole. And that us being spirits in the eyes of a greater being sharing/trading different experiences.

I might be able to speak to what Julia just wrote/asked… I had a friend at the beginning who was very much into feminist theory and studies and who couldn’t understand why I was unable to just be…”differently male” (gender roles are constructed by society, there is no either/or, why don’t you be truly revolutionary and defy societal expectations with the body you have, etc.). She felt that I was “selling out”.

My brain. Not the rest of my body. My brain works SO much better on estrogen. I have been back and I have been forward with this (in regards to hormones/amounts/types and a few set-backs). And all I can say is that whatever you want to call it…whatever I am or I am not…my brain was not wired to go through puberty the way I did. I describe it as lights being turned off….*click*….and it took me until I was 21 to begin to address this.

My role…my dress…how I act or don’t. What I like or don’t. Gay or straight. None of this matters to the physical..biological!…fact that hormone therapy could do for me what I wasn’t able to do on my own. No amount of personal growth, feminist theory, societal rebellion or calming meditation could affect me in the way that I needed.

Yes it does require a lot of personal work. A lot of other therapy and growth and acceptance and self-love. Of understanding that you don’t become male or female…you just become your self. And yes I like the changes that these hormones bring to my body… I ENJOY being able to wear what I like and talk and act and be as I like (that is to my own personal tastes and pleasures). I adore the way my body feels now. I cherish it. I am so thankful for the body I have…in ways I could never experience before.

This would not have been possible in centuries gone past. I am not a victim, nor do I have a mental disorder…but I do need medical help and I am so thankful for the doctors who have helped me and for the knowledge and skills that allow me the pills that make my lights turn on. (And I am also thankful and fortunate to have had my “epiphany” at an early age…and for the resources that we’re becoming available and the privilege I enjoy here in Canada. I know this is not the reality for all and I am sorry for that.)

I was born transgendered. I am female. This is a physical and fundamental fact of my existence…not a role or a theory or a transgressive statement against society. But that is my own truth..my own feelings and I would never claim or define this for anyone else.

Thank you Sara! I sometimes wonder if trans folks do need a different discourse, if the feminist discourse can’t always aptly describe the lived experience. And yet, as a feminist I want to include everyone who believes in the equality of humanity. But I appreciate your description, it elevates trans issues above the dichotomy (which the “trapped” narrative only further entrenches – mind/body, he/she, am/am not) and clarified a bit for me what the physical situation can be like. But if anyone else who wants to chime in, please do! (PS, I am always looking for folks to write about queer travel experiences for my blog, so hit me up if you’re interested, this is a very cool group of people!)

Julia one of the big problems with feminism is its helped to confuse what gender originaly meant when first applied and especially first applied to Transsexuals. Gender when originally applied to Transsexuals meant exactly the same thing as sex. So gender identity in the classic sense means sex identity. I have simply always identified as being female albeit one dealt a funky hand. Gender as you know in feminism means the socially constructed roles of men and women, that puts its in conflict with the original intent of gender as just being a polite way of saying sex. I believe there is more to gender than socially constructed roles and a lot of the research into it is shaky when held to a higher standard. I think many feminist are blinded to just how much transsexualism is also a reproductive rights issue. I also think many feminist don’t realize the damage they are doing by tying being female exclusively to reproductive organs and fertility. I’ve sat side with a woman friend that was born infertile while a feminist spoke to our class should she just take one for the team? It also gave her a great insight into how I felt and how I’m also let down by feminism. I wonder how much tying feminism to being fertile as harmed infertile women or drove them to spend thousands and thousands of dollars trying to have a child? You also don’t have to be fertile to be raped even though the consequences of getting pregnant while raped are justifiably higher. There is also the issue of backroom sexchanges and related procedures and backroom abortions and related procedures. Self harm related to being transsexual and self harm related to an unwanted pregnancy. Both sex reasignment and abortion are viewed with equal disdain when considered for federal funding or for insurance coverage of them both are related to reproductive freedom and neither are really cosmetic when applied to a person in desperate need of either. I have to admit I support women’s rights I’m just not so sure of feminism because I see it as having caused a lot of collateral damage to women and definetly to transsexuals. Is there room to come together I’m not sure thats possible at this point. I also know that I don’t need to be feminist approving or need feminist permission to be female.

Hi Lisa, thanks for answering my question so thoughtfully! I just wanted to say how sorry I am that you are feeling excluded from the feminist conversation, it’s a loss for everyone to not know others’ points of view (in my opinion). I just wanted to say that the part of the feminist conversation that I have heard most often is actually very aware that reproductive capability does not define womanhood (I shudder to think what it would mean if it did – I don’t plan on having children, and I don’t want not being a mother to take away from my “womanhood”!). My question is not about sex essentialism (though you’re right that it does bring up a lot of messy issues in itself), but rather I want to ask, “what is gender, to the trans community, IF we acknowledge gender essentialism to be harmful?” Because feminism aims to be inclusive and seeking equality for marginalized people, I want to make sure that trans and genderqueer voices are not only heard, but fully understood! (And thank you to everyone on this blog for helping others to understand better!)

Tina

January 1, 2013 at 7:11 pm ·

“what is gender, to the trans community, IF we acknowledge gender essentialism to be harmful?”

I’ll try to answer that question since now you have pointed out directly what you are asking about. Don’t know, if I can though, but I’ll try:

I think the harmfulness of gender essentialism as fought against by feminism is in the thinking that society thinks that sex creates certain attributes in people (for female e.g. weak, dependent, caring etc.) and that these attributes lead to certain roles in society, usually the “lesser” ones. So, one way to address this problem is to declare that sex doesn’t matter, that there are no sex specific attributes and thus there is no reason for gender roles. And I agree to the point that of course there shouldn’t be any gender roles but I don’t think that sex doesn’t matter, because mine matters a lot to me, which I feel very directly because it’s not the one my mind expects me to have.

Also feminism should have imho two directions of fight:

1. To fight against ascribing gender roles on people according to their perceived sex.
2. To fight against considering personality attributes that are currently connected to femaleness (feminine attributes) less than masculine attributes.

The second part is often overlooked. In fact, in my experience queer feminism is often sexist in that respect: masculinity is often valued higher than femininity, as long as it is expressed by female-assigned-at-birth people.

As a trans person I value my femaleness and my femininity and it is important to me that they both are not necessarily connected. The trans experience itself I describe as “my brain expects a female body”, in that respect my experience is similar to Sara’s. Only hormones could give me piece of mind, neither therapy nor meditation or self exploration could give me that. In earlier centuries I would probably have gotten a castration to achieve part of that effect (provided I’d have figured it out, otherwise I would have been in misery). That I am also feminine is a different issue, although it only really came out after transitioning – before I was probably too afraid of homo-/transphobic reactions to strongly express it. But you don’t have to be female, trans or whatever to be feminine and also just that you identify as female doesn’t require you to be feminine.

Don’t know if that really clarified things. If you want to dig deeper, I recommend the book Whipping Girl by Julia Serano, especially the chapters about subconscious sex and about intrinsic inclinations. Also here http://gayutopia.blogspot.de/2007/12/julia-serano-performance-piece.html is Julia Serano’s piece about her frustration with the “all gender is performance” in queer feminist circles.

Hi Janet, I have a question that’s been on my mind for some time – maybe you or one of your readers could help me out? I always wonder about the how to be inclusive of trans people in feminist conversations (I am a cis woman), because so much of feminism is based on the idea of shunning gender essentialism. It’s a little embarrassing for me to ask what seems like a basic question, but how do trans people (or whatever trans people want to answer this, I know it’s different for everyone!) reconcile this part of feminism with their gender experience? I guess the heart of what I’m asking is really tough – what is gender? How does dysmorphia feel if there is no gender essentialism? Or IS there gender essentialism? – but I’ve been puzzling over it with no luck for a while! (And by the way, thank you for a great article!)

Check out the links at Questioning Transphobia; they should answer your question. But as a quick summary, gender identity and gender roles / expression are not the same thing. Feminism focuses on the latter. Trans identities are about the former.

It does get confusing sometimes. I am something of an activist in queer feminist circles which are very much against any kind of essentialism and in a way I agree with them since it is important to me that gender roles are optional and socially constructed.

On the other hand, often people in these circles try to remove gender roles by removing gender. This goes very much against my trans experience since I have come to realize that gender is an important part of who I am, that transitioning (including physical aspects) is very important for my mental well-being, which wouldn’t be the case if gender/sex would be just a social construct. I can only be myself if I think if myself as a woman – something that is not part of the experience of many of my cis female friends. For them their gender and sex is just a given and not very important to them. For them it is mostly important to escape any expectations society places on them because of their gender and sex but they cannot necessarily see that this is different from rejecting gender altogether.

I can totally identify w/ this line of thinking….”Why don’t I like it? Because it places me in the role of victim, and to those who take mainstream media depictions as truth I’m seen as a human to be pitied because I’m someone who needs to be saved, rather than a self-determined woman with agency and choice and the ability to define who I am in this society and who I will become in spite of it.” As a former sex worker I completely took control of my own agency….from reading books, online articles and from independent workers and interviewing women face-to-face and making up my do’s and don’ts and had some really wonderful and self-affirming moments and great human connections (mentally speaking) and never once did I feel victimized or de-humanized. Thanks for writing such a well-thought-out piece!

You can count me as another voice for the non-“trapped in the wrong body” life story. It was definitely difficult when I was finally sitting down to figure out if I’m trans, realizing that the story that everyone was telling (and in books like True Selves) wasn’t matching with my experiences. It made me doubt whether I was actually trans, because I sure felt like I was. Fortunately, I started to slowly come across other stories of trans women that more closely resembled my own. We need to be telling our alternative stories; the public needs a better understanding, and we need the stories out there so that other questioning trans folk know the diversity of trans experiences.

I’m so glad to have read this. I’m not trans, and I’m definitely guilty of jumping on the “trapped in the wrong body” bandwagon, mostly because I feel that way myself with regards to my blindness, which made me wonder whether my experience had any commonalities with those of trans individuals. I’ve been blind since birth, but feel like I should see, like there are these fragments or parts of me who can see, so when I get lumped into the blind world, I feel like I’m giving up part of myself. I’d even come up with the term “blind dysphoria” to describe my experience, but I’ve been realizing that its harmful to co-opt the trans experience, and though I may resonate with individual people, I can’t make a general statement about how my rleationship to my blindness is similar to a trans persons’s relationship with their body.

I like this segment, because, in my world, although I never actually felt like the woman that society had laid out for me, and felt more similar to male roles, or gender neutral roles, and being born and referred to as female, I just kind of took charge of my life, and wished to not be referred to as any one gender, but rather as a concoction of both, while accepting the body I was given and not allowing media or society to influence how I should look or act based on that. Both my parents didn’t lead typical gender roles in my family, which allowed me to be accepted as I am, however, now in my adulthood, my mother continues to try and force more stereotypical female ways of dress and hairstyles on me, which has annoyed me to no end. I have no desire to have surgery to alter my body to look more like that which the environment would identify as male, however, I am willing to alter my own perceptions of myself within this same light, and accept that sometimes I may be referred to as male, and other times as female…. as those are the perceptions of others, and I can’t control how they have been molded. It’s how I see myself, and how I share of myself to others which really counts.

Yes, yes and more YES! Thank you for putting this into 1s and 0s on the internet! It’s an idea I’ve had trouble with for a long time and it always felt so slightly off-base. It works well-enough as a way creating a picturesque sense of empathy for cis folks, but it leads to them to make such offensive assumptions sometimes.
People want me to tell them how I hated my body, and the truth is, I didn’t. I never did. It just never felt like it was quite right. More like the builders has mucked up the blueprints and installed the wrong fixtures. Nice fixtures, but not the ones that where meant to be there. A little remod though and things are much better.
But really, I never felt ‘trapped’ or resentful.
My parents where good hippies who did the whole peace and love thing and more or less forgot to teach me to hate my body or be ashamed of it. Or push many heavy gender roles on me either for that matter.
I just felt as if I had somehow been miscast at the audition. I was rehearsing the wrong role and the play just never really worked. A little recasting though and it’s Tonys all around!!
Maybe I’m torturing an entirely new analogy here, but, ummmmmmmm, yeah. Thank you for writing this.

Ms. Mock is spot on yet again. I would love to see the media focus their energies on stories of hope, success, and renewel. There are plenty of post-transition life journies that should be covered, as well as non-op trans* people who’s voices are made mute by the sexualization of transgender individuals through the alienation of our transitions. The general public is fascinated by our transitions because that is the only part of our journies and lives that is well-documented. I look forward to learning about the actual lives, careers, families of the people I admire.

the idea of “trapped in the wrong body”, like a lot of things used to talk about being trans*, probably sounded good the first few times the basic concept of transness was explained to someone else. as you put it, Janet, “convenient, lazy”….but then it got really easy to blow out of proportion dramatically in a way that trivializes what we’re dealing with.

what i suppose i’m curious about is how we frame this to people who don’t understand, who’ve never met another trans person…or at least haven’t knowingly met another trans person. people hold and cling to their gender as very innate in many cases and the “trapped” ideal gets it through their head, just in a really flawed and dramatic manner. media controls how people perceive us, and this is why we get so unhappy when media plays to stereotypes or ridicule of trans women, but how do we counter-spin the media? because this is a healthy start, don’t get me wrong, but half the time when explaining my past to someone i’ve “invited in” (i really like that phrase, Janet) i get about 6000 questions about why i don’t look like those trans women you see on television.

…and, yeah, i die a little bit inside, because it’s holding me up to a standard of white/femme/hetero/skinny/able-bodied that i just can’t meet, and it also does remind me why i have all this social invisibility which keeps me safe in many cases, but it also makes me feel like those media images and portrayals are the trans women the media *wants* to validate and not the rest of us who have boring little lives. if we are to change how we are perceived by the media, we must validate the diversity of trans experiences, too, and i think this is a critical part of a larger strategy.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I have never been “trapped in the wrong body” and want to scream every time I hear the phrase. If someone chooses to describe their own journey that way, fine. But having that convenient phrase slapped on all trans people is frustrating and limiting. I did just fine in my pre-transition body, and I’m doing just fine in my transitioned body.

Hi Janet. Yours is a post I pretty much wish I had written. Different perspective, same sentiment.

I should tell you I strongly dislike the term “transgender,” as it sounds so clinical. And don’t get me started on “gender dysphoria” … or “gender identity disorder.” (If homosexuality is no longer considered a “disorder.” why is our situation still viewed as one? How are we going to get past perceived stigmas when we’re perceived to have a “disorder”?)

And to that effect, I’ve never felt “trapped in my own body,” either, probably for different reasons than you. Maybe it’s because of my Gemini-variety twin-spiritedness. (It’s no accident Bugs Bunny was one of my role models growing up …) I’ve always felt equal parts of both genders growing up — my love of cars and sports, my unrequited longing to be pretty and take ballet and do things with the girls. If anything, my uneasiness manifested itself more in feeling like a general overall misfit because I didn’t fit into anyone’s world very neatly — and, by the same turn, no one fit neatly into mine, either.

I’ve never felt the need for the surgery, as I still like girls (though now it would be one of either sex). But as someone who came out and started her wild gender trip in her late 40s, I can tell you that, save for needing to drop a lifetime of weight, I’ve never felt more comfortable in my own body. Just being who I truly am at last has taken a lot of stress out of my life — and made me a healthier person physically. After I told one of my dearest friends, a former newspaper colleague I worked with 20 years ago, she told me, “The one thing I’ve always thought of you was ‘never comfortable in his own skin.'”

My entrapment, if you’d call it that, was more psychological, if anything — dealing (or not) with a world that still sees things as binary.

In all, I’m glad of who and what I am. I’m glad I’ve had the chance to see and live life from both genders and take the best elements of both. It’s been a unique trip. It hasn’t been a “disorder” — it’s been a gift.

I don’t watch a lot of TV, and as a lifelong newspaper journalist, I’d probably have a lot less patience with TV people than you seen to have. Keep it up, Janet, and keep educating the Hodas of the world. There are always going to be teaching moments.

I think the trapped in the wrong body meme leads to the Jerry Springer like sayings I was born a man or born male etc. I never ever felt that myself I simply felt mixed right out of the gate. For whatever reason my first memories weren’t of associating with the world as being male only being perceived as such by forces outside my control. That is probably why I am one of the ones that hold a medical view to all this and resent putting Trans anything in front of woman. I have always identified as female first so why shouldn’t I identify as woman first before trans anything? One of the hardest things I’ve personally struggled with is knowing that I will never be 100% female but now I see Transgender as attacking the one thing that I can be which is 100% legally female. That is one of the other things that help to make me the outspoken critic of Transgender that I am. Some of you will get this but many of you might not regardless of my Trans status I was never 100% male either so I very much resent being associated with a listed birth sex. It really burns me that I can take the steps to become legally as I identify as female yet the LGBT and supporters of the use of Transgender have no problems taking that away from me by lobbying to have me labelled Transgender for life. At some point I’d like to be able to move beyond all this or atleast have the option if I so choose. I also believe that just because someone is born same sex attracted or sex and gender diverse does not mean they should have to be associated with the LGBT or its politics they are in fact two very different things.

I mispelled my last name lol it is McDonald. I realize that you shouldn’t answer this openly Janet but doesn’t it bother you like it does me there are post-operative supposedly female identified Transsexual people that have their birth sex listed as male are married to women and claim to be heterosexual? That is another issue I have with Transgender and how it harms those who really were born with a cross sexed identity.

Lisa, can you point out any trans* people who are somehow preventing you from being legally female or lobbying against your rights? Because all I ever see is holier-than-thou women of trans history making it as hard as possible for other trans* people to access legal recognition and protection, as well as medical care.

Lisa, I pretty much share your viewpoint as well. why go down a road, but never have a chance to reach your destination,,,.I do not want to see a third sex designation..My theory is ,you are one or the other….If you cannot comit..then what are you? Who are you?…Those who are “gender confused” so to speak .,do much harm to those, who know who they are, and are just trying to meld in..I of course wish the gender confused all the peace in the world…But I am a woman…That is what I have on my credentials,and my lower anatomy,as well.I do not want that taken away, to be some other, after almost 30 yrs as a a woman.and wife.and medical professional…This is all a serious connundrum…for everyone involved…All I can ultimately say is…To all my sisters out there …I wish you all peace and the love for yourselves and also ,for you to extend love to all humanity…Be the finest ambasedors to the world at large ,that you can be..Always reach out to help another human…Show the world that we are good kind people…

i dont like any of this conversation/speculation;in particular,speculation.as hard as people try,they cant judge whats going on in peoples heads not really.i am a difficult case and rutinely misjudged by even transgender folks(some of them even know have the hair standing up on their backs ready to scratch my eyes out!) i have done all the boy stuff very well-surfing,motorcycle racing,army,navy.and i obviously looked like a boy and i still have a hard time with my voice.but that does not mean i am not a girl.the core stuff likes etc.come from the center somehow and eminate out.i”ll stop talking weird now-but all of u judging just dont knowand i never have talked aboutit to anyone before my wonderfull therapist.the one person who doesnt seem to judge.my mother did not know anything about it and now is in denial.and i bet you-reader are sitting in judgement even now-without sitting in on therapy sessions.its real and u really dont have the put away information.to judge.love god and your neghbor,leave the judging to god-i think thats a quote from someone important.u may want to look it up.-phoenix,az.

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